Faith leaders enter Broadview ICE facility on Ash Wednesday after judge's order

With ashes on their foreheads and hands clasped, three clergy members prayed before walking toward the Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement center after months of being denied access.

Faith leaders active in opposing the Trump administration’s immigration practices entered the facility Wednesday for the first time in months after a federal judge in Chicago issued a preliminary injunction last week ordering the Department of Homeland Security to allow them into the building.

“You won’t say it feels good because it doesn’t feel good to be able to have to do this,” said Father Paul Keller, Provincial for the Claretian Missionaries. “But we are grateful for the opportunity to provide presence and pastoral care to people who are in very traumatic circumstances in their life.”

The Department of Homeland Security previously said faith leaders weren’t allowed into the building because it was a processing center, not a detention facility.

But during ramped-up immigration detainments in the Chicago area during Operation Midway Blitz last fall, the processing center operated as a de facto detention center but lacked the rules and oversight, a Sun-Times and WBEZ investigation found.

Four immigrants and three staff members at the facility received communion and ashes on their foreheads for Ash Wednesday services, marking one of the holiest times of year for Christians and Catholics. The four migrants appeared to be recently detained, clergy members said.

“You saw the crying eyes, confusion, uncertainty,” said Father Leandro Fossá, pastor for Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Melrose Park. “You could also see they were responsive, so they felt the hope of the moment they could see the church was there with them.”

What clergy members found inside the facility was a far cry from what it would have been last year during the Trump administration's immigration blitz. The windows were still boarded up and a fence and other barriers still kept protesters and the public at bay, but the building was empty when they arrived, they said. Just four detainees arrived while they were there, a striking difference from reports last fall of the building being crowded with people and little room to sleep.

Religious immigrant advocates, including the late Sisters Pat Murphy and JoAnn Persch, used to regularly visit with immigrants detained at the Broadview facility until the COVID-19 pandemic pushed visits online in 2020.

But after faith leaders were denied access this fall as the Trump administration upped its immigration enforcement in the area, some clergy members sued the federal government. The Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, a plaintiff in the case, accused the government of violating federal law and First Amendment rights of religious leaders and detainees.

“We want to continue to do what we were able to do for so many years and suddenly stopped with the change in direction here,” said Sister Jeremy Midura, a Felician sister and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Sister Pat and Sister JoAnn were able to go into the facility. All that changed.”

Clergy members said the facility appeared clean, despite reports of squalid conditions inside the building last fall, and immigration agents were accommodating. They said they intend to schedule more visits to the facility.